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An attitude of gratitude impacts relationships in many, and sometimes surprising, ways. Over the next few days, we will explore some of them.

Psychologists have begun to explore how gratitude can help build social bonds, strengthen existing relationships and build new ones. This is a very important area of research these days, given the recently discovered link between social relationships, wellbeing and longevity.

Several studies have shown that practicing gratitude can produce feelings of connectedness with others. Feeling gratitude towards people (even if not directly expressed) has the impact of feeling closer to them and reporting higher quality relationships with those people.

Experts like Robert Emmons hypothesize that when you become aware of the value of your friends and family, you are likely to treat them better, producing an "upward spiral," a sort of positive feedback loop, in which strong relationships give you something to be grateful for, and those feelings of...

Human beings are remarkably adaptable creatures. When something bad happens to us, after a while, we tend to get used to the new state of affairs and our happiness goes back to what it was before the negative occurrence.

This is good news, right?

This same tendency of adaptability can work against us when good things happen to us. When our circumstances change for the better – when we start earning more money, find a new love, buy a new car, recover from illness – we experience a boost in happiness and contentment. This boost in happiness though, is short lived. When the novelty or "newness" of this good fortune wears off, we get used to it and we get back to the same level of happiness (or unhappiness) that we were at before the good fortune.

Psychologists call this phenomenon hedonic adaptation. The dictionary defines hedonistic adaptation as the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness (or unhappiness) despite major...

As we discussed yesterday, practicing gratitude can counteract our tendency to give up on goals if we do not get instant gratification.

Another very interesting study has looked into how the patience and perseverance developed by gratitude plays out in financial decision making.

David DeSteno of Northwestern University led a study where participants were asked to recall an event that made them feel grateful, happy, or neutral. After writing about this event, they reported their mood and then made a series of financial decisions.

The participants in the study had an interesting choice at the end of the session: they could either take a cash reward right there or they could choose to receive a larger amount of money in the mail at a later date.

The researchers found that those who had experienced gratitude were much more likely to wait for the bigger payout.

DeSteno reported that the "financial patience" of participants in the study had increased by about 12 percent just by recalling...

Sometimes people who are high achievers begin to believe that they must only focus on the future target in order to achieve more. Focusing on what you already have and showing gratitude for it, they think, can leave you feeling complacent and would dampen ambition. In other words, "If I have enough, maybe I don’t need to achieve more."

This prevailing but unproven idea has been debunked by the research done by rock-star gratitude researchers Robert Emmons and Anjali Mishra.

This particular study involved students listing goals they hoped to reach over a two-month period. One group of students were asked to maintain a regular gratitude practice and the other group was not given this instruction. Ten weeks later, when the researchers checked back on the students’ progress, they found that grateful students were closer than others in the study to reaching their goals.

Emmons and Mishra concluded that "gratitude enhances effortful goal striving." In other words, it makes...

Research shows that gratitude activates our parasympathetic (the calming part of the) nervous system and this results in decreasing cortisol (the stress hormone) levels and therefore reducing stress.

The connection between gratitude and stress may not be immediately obvious. After all, why would my stress go down when I feel grateful for something?

Here are some possible explanations:

The directing of attention: Our brain can generally only focus on one thing at a time. When we intentionally move our attention away from stressful thoughts and instead direct it to a positive memory or experience, it can create a sense of wellbeing and cause us to let go of stress.

Recognizing support:When we direct your gratitude towards people, we recognize that we have been on the receiving end of love and support from people. We realize that we are not alone and that we have resources to deal with stress.

Switching away from automatic negative thinking:Stress is often caused by catastrophizing and...

Yesterday, we discussed how insomnia is a common ailment in modern times. Today’s let’s talk about another very common ailment of life in the 21stcentury: anxiety.

If you ever worry, have nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome, know that you are not alone.

As humans, we are naturally inclined to worry about things. It may help to understand that although it does not feel good at the time, worrying can actually have a calming effect on the limbic system of the brain. When you are worrying, your mind feels like it is "doing something" about the situation by trying to see all of the possibilities or figure out a solution (often obsessively).

However, although understandable, worrying is uncomfortable and generally not productive. So do you want to consider a way both to feel good AND give your brain something to do to keep it occupied? If so, consider interrupting the anxiety/worry spiral by asking yourself one or...

Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep? So many of us do, these days. Sometimes the insomnia is caused by our busy lives, by thoughts about what went wrong during the day or what might go wrong the next day. These thoughts spin around in our heads and stop us from relaxing so that we can drift off to sleep.

Here is how gratitude can help.

Various studies have found that people with sleep disorders responded well to a gratitude practice. A gratitude practice such as journaling improved both duration and quality of sleep.

In research, gratitude was related to having more positive thoughts, and fewer negative ones at bedtime. This, in turn, was associated with dozing off faster and sleeping longer and better.

So it seems that when you cultivate gratitude throughout the day, and practice it at bedtime as well, you're more likely to have positive thoughts as you're drifting off to sleep. Rather than ruminating over the friend who let you down, you are more likely to think of...

In case you need some motivation to start a regular gratitude practice, we will explore some of its benefits over the next few days.

There is a lot of solid research showing that gratitude is a key component to help people live happier, longer lives.

Here are just some of the positive impacts on physical health that various studies have found:
Keeping a gratitude journal caused participants to report:

- fewer physical symptoms
- more time spent exercising
- less physical pain
- Patients with hypertension reported a significant decrease in their systolic blood pressure.
- A gratitude practice increased levels of energy and vitality experienced by the participants.
- Keeping a gratitude journal increased the participants likelihood of self-care and wellbeing-boosting behaviours such as healthy eating, going to the doctor and exercising.

Given these results, it appears that gratitude has both a direct and an indirect impact on our physical health. It makes sense that we incorporate a...

Today inshallah we start a series on the emotion and practice of gratitude: what it is, why it matters and how we can cultivate it.

Before we go any further, let us explore what we mean by gratitude. Here are some ways that psychologists and social scientists define gratitude:

"[Gratitude] has been conceptualized as an emotion, a virtue, a moral sentiment, a motive, a coping response, a skill, and an attitude. It is all of these and more. Minimally, gratitude is an emotional response to a gift. It is the appreciation felt after one has been the beneficiary of an altruistic act" (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000).

"[Gratitude is] a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives … As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals–whether to other people, nature, or a higher power" [Harvard Medical School ]

Robert Emmons, is...

Today’s verse is also from Sura Israa [The Night Journey] where Allah says:

Lower unto them the wing of humility out of compassion and say, "My Lord! Have mercy upon them, as they cherished me when I was little." [Quran 17:24]

As we said yesterday, Islam lays great emphasis on the courtesies towards parents, especially as they age. This verse also expresses the abundance of mercy, affection, and humility with which adult children should aspire to treat their parents.

Here, a beautiful image is evoked of a bird that lovingly spreads its wings over its offspring to shelter and protect them in the nest.

Scholars explain that this metaphor of a high-flying bird which lowers her wing out of tenderness to her offspring is apt because when the parent was strong and the child was helpless, parental affection was showered on the child and so when the child grows up and is strong, and the parent becomes increasingly helpless, the child must do the same for the parent. However, the child...